Overall these are nice colored pencils. They will never be my favorite, but they are more convenient than traditional colored pencils, especially with the plastic case they come in, when it comes to having a set you can toss in a backpack, or leave in the car, to take with you places. They do not have the same color texture as standard colored pencils when you color with them however. Sometimes that is more noticeable than others and some colors work well to blend and shade while others do not or only do if layered in a particular order. It can be seen in a few examples where the blue and purple do blend and the red sometimes do and sometimes don't, the yellow and orange mostly do not and some of the browns do and some don't and although it's difficult to see most of the green's do not which make coloring most plant life more difficult. The texture or the color work and the lack of blending is what will prevent these from being my go to every day first choice pencils. These are a slightly smaller around than another set of 2.0 mechanical colored pencil I purchased at the same time, however unless you are looking from the top visually this is hard to tell. Interesting that the 2.6 mm is smaller around than the 2.0mm. Both sets are roughly the size of standard colored pencils, though I'd wager this set is slightly smaller around. This set is also slightly longer, little less than half an inch, the distance of the height of what would be the erasers if they were standard writing pencils. They do not have erasers it is just colored plastic on the end. Each pencil has a color number on the very end also that can be seen from the top. The 36 colors included are not really 36 colors. There are several colors that are so close to each other that when you color with them you can not tell them apart, which is also true of the other set I purchased. I found this especially true in the blue's and found the green's in this set significantly lacking Between the two sets however I pulled about 40 that make a great combined selection. 40 is a tight fight, but do actually all fit in the 36 count plastic container. 30 from this set and 10 that are slightly smaller around. 42 fit if you don't mind that the lid won't go on all the way. The lid is tighter around the top of the pencils then the container is around the pencils themselves due to the fact it sits inside the bottom of the container, turning the pencils upside down the lid is still tight around the tips of the pencils but it works. Both sets have included sharpeners. This set it is a tube with a sharpener, while the other set the end of each pencil has a sharpener in it. That is a bit excessive IMO. Also the tube collects the shavings from sharpening the pencils and while there may not be as much as sharpening standard colored pencils, there are still some and being able to collect them is nice rather then the shavings just float in the air or all over your hands. Also by not having the sharpener in the end each pencil's top is the color of the pencil opposed to the white sharpeners. My only real complaint about these is that they do not stay sharp for any length of time at all and since it is 2.6 mm lead that leaves a very large blunt end. Also true of both sets I have, in order to sharpen them the lead needs to be extended much farther than I would want it extended when coloring with it. You can see in the photo with the tips where the pink and purple are sharp and the tips more extended than the brown orange and gray and how much sharper then can get by extending them, those the very sharp tip as in the purple especially the 3rd one in will most likely break off with very little pressure and look like the orange one. The blue's, red and green though you can see that with very minimal coloring they quickly become fairly dull. Though admittedly the blue's I gave up sharpening them and colored the birds with them as they are.
